1878.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



197 



wood earth with which tlie beds were liberally 

 dressed. A wash of lime and sulphur will 

 branch drooped with rich, full verdure, and 

 a store of berries for the winter tarrying 

 birds. Around this group thus arranged, 

 circling from one to another, and up the 

 central pinnacle, wound and festooned a vigor- 

 ous Bitter-sweet. Its tender, frost-tinged foli- 

 age, sparse in such untutored soil, and a girt 

 of blazing berries along every tendril, flashing 

 from out its fringe, hung out distinct against the 

 dark background of these cedars. 



To emphasize this tasteful ari'ay of color, 

 the frost-tinged crimson drapery of a climbing 

 Sumach, threaded and girt a couple of the furth- 

 ermost Cedars, and stretched its gay streamers 

 up that central spire. So perfect was the grace 

 and coloring of this group that, to human eye, it 

 seemed rather the living mosaic of some master 

 taste than one of nature's careful rearing. 



This woodland lesson tells to the heedful new 

 uses for the Bitter-sweet and its like. What 

 infinite variety might be tastefully wrought, out 

 of the kaleidoscope of bright colors or growing 

 things ? For example, imagine added to the 

 pencilling of this group, the golden foliage of the 

 Japanese Honeysuckle, delicately robing one of 

 these cedars, and threading its tendrils among 

 those crimson ribbons streaming up that central 

 spire. Again, how would look in this mosaic, 

 girt around the base of this cedar group, a fringe 

 of scarlet, say in company with the bright tints 

 on leaf or flower of other brilliant plants. These 

 are but hints. The chances for like effects are as 

 infinite as the varied tinge on leaf or flower, or 

 as their unlike growths. 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



Rhododendrons. — Our magnificent Spring 

 weather has made gardening more than usually 

 enjoyable, and there has been little openly 

 expressed hankering after the Horticultural 

 advantages of other lands. The writer of this 

 could not resist the temptation to take a run of 

 a few hours to look at his neighbor's little gardens 

 recently, and he was particularly struck by the 

 immense number of Rhododendrons every where 

 planted, and which seem to be thriving so well, 

 since their simple culture is so well undei'stood, 

 and which is simply deep, cool soil, the surface 

 sufficiently elevated above the surrounding soil 



to keep the little han--like roots from ever being 

 water-logged. The older planted Rhododen- 

 dron beds are particularly charming. In 

 the case of Mr. John Haines, the branch 

 bent down with the weight of bloom, and 

 actually had to be shored up in some instances 

 as in an overloaded fruit tree. Mrs. Harry 

 IngersoU's are simpl}' magnificent, some being 

 nearly twenty feet high, and of an immense 

 variety of color. The best clump of these were 

 admirably assisted in the general effect by a 

 very large and well-proportioned purple leaved 

 Beech tree. Miss Fox, a neighbor of Mrs. 

 Ingersoll, has some beds of charming varieties, 

 but are only about twelve years set out. They 

 are now about five to eight feet high, and form 

 one broad sheet of bloom. 



On our trip we learned that there may, in the 

 future, be some little troubles, which it will be 

 well for Rhododendron growers to look after, 

 and guard against. In one, the trouble was 

 from a very lively aphis, which keeps to the 

 under sides of the leaves and gives the foliage a 

 musty look on the under siu-face. It makes the 

 plants unsightly, and is an injury, though not to 

 a very serious extent. 



A worse trouble comes from a borer,a species of 

 Buprestis, which hollows the stems in the cen- 

 ter. It does not enter at the ground, as does the 

 Quince or Peach borer, but on the branches. It 

 is more after the fashion of the common Cur- 

 rant borer in the kind of work it does. The Bel- 

 gian Azaleas near were also attacked with it, 

 but it may be a foreign insect introduced here, 

 and may not spread to any great extent. 



Another veiy serious trouble was found in a 

 very interesting collection about twelve years 

 old. The leaves had a withery look, and some, 

 attacked last year, were quite dead. Examining 

 the stems just beneath the ground, we found the 

 coarse, wooly threads of a fungus, eating its 

 course around, in many cases completely gird- 

 ling them. It is a very common fungus in 

 woods, and many persons may have seen it on a 

 piece of board on which a flower pot has stood. 

 It is no new thing that this coarse, thready fungus, 

 so generally on dead wood, will leave it and 

 attack living stems. Mr. William Saunders 

 called the writer's attention, some thirty years 

 ago. to a case in a cold grapery, where it had 

 left an old board and eaten a way for itself 

 around the stem of a huge Grape vine. But it 

 [ is not often it does this. In this Rhododendron 

 i case, it evidently came from the lialf-decayed 



